


Those Who Would Wound Me

by bloodfever



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: ALL THE FRIENDSHIPS, M/M, Plus a cactus, Some Courferre, Some Enjoltaire if you squint, Why a cactus?, Why not a cactus!, triumvirate friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodfever/pseuds/bloodfever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In every permeation of the multi-verse Enjolras and Combeferre are bonded, just as it should be.</p><p>In every permeation of the multi-verse a cactus is sacrificed.</p><p>Those two things <i>may</i> be related.</p><p>(<i>Or: Five Times Enjolras Brutally Murdered A Cactus, and One Time He Gifted One Instead</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Would Wound Me

**I**

_Somehow_ between planning the revolution, keeping the Amis on track, and attending medical school Combeferre has the opportunity to indulge his many other interests.  Courfeyrac being one, delightful and new.  The polarisation of light.  Natural history.  Horticulture.  He lives in the lodgings next door to Enjolras, which was both convenient to them and a terrible inconvenience to their landlady.  If the rent was paid on time she does not complain too much, and they get on with their lives with only moderate disruption to the rest of the household.

Combeferre appears at Enjolras’ door on his birthday, bearing a cactus and a bottle of wine as a gift.  The cactus had been obtained from M. Mabeuf’s garden, which of course was just an avenue to leave some small charity with the old man while maintaining both their dignities.  Enjolras is delighted and gives it pride of place on his dressing table.

Meetings are getting more intense.  The murmurs of the people are getting louder, Enjolras can hear their call in his veins.  The activity behind the closed door of the back room of the Musain is reaching frenzy, and tempers are frayed.  Enjolras and Grantaire are arguing, and Combeferre passes by to place a hand on Enjolras’ arm.  It’s enough to ground Enjolras a little, and leaves Grantaire muttering about how they can speak without the benefit of their tongues.

A shot rings out one night, just as Combeferre was getting ready to blow out his candles, and he rushes across to Enjolras’ rooms, banging on the door and demanding to know what had happened.  Enjolras opens the door, a little surprised but evidently perfectly fine, and steps aside to allow Combeferre access.  That’s when Combeferre realises Enjolras is holding a pistol, and there is a hole in the wall approximately where the cactus had once been.

“It was self-defence,” Enjolras explained.  “Well, it was target practice, but _to that end_.”  Combeferre turns on his heels and retreats back to his own rooms.

**II**

The giant ship has been travelling for so long its history is now mythology.  It's generational, multi-species, working together in a loose cooperative, taking on inhabitants and relocating them as it goes, exploring and learning, pointed ever outward into the stars.

Enjolras is from a small planet in orbit around two binary stars.  They have not yet had time to give in to their better natures; there is conflict and social upheaval, inequalities and resource shortages.Xe was injured in some civil unrest, xe lay dying, and the ship picked xem up and carried xem away.  Xe has been on-board ever since.  Combeferre has lived his entire life aboard ship and has never known anything else.  He doesn't need to though, the constant stream of people in and out, the new systems and planets, getting to explore, and it’s all Combeferre needs.  Until he meets Enjolras.

Their metabolic requirements are not compatible, they can only comfortably inhabit the same room for 25 minutes per daily cycle before respiration becomes impossible, but somehow it's enough for them.  Their brain wave patterns oscillate on the same frequency, they only needed the first 7 minutes to know each other intimately, and _intimately_.  Something which Combeferre’s cabin-mate Grantaire complains about endlessly.  “It’s not fair, you spend 7 minutes in the same room as xem and you are pairbonded.  Why isn’t it that easy for me?”  Combeferre does what passes for a shrug.

Combeferre brings the cactus in one morning and presents it to Enjolras shyly.  It's from my species' home world, he explains, the spines are deceptively soft, and it will learn to answer when you call.

A week later they are sitting in that same room and Combeferre can see something suspended outside the ship, just beyond the viewing portal.  The moves over to get a better look and realises it’s the cactus, drifting through the infinite nothingness.  Enjolras has the decency to look apologetic as xe explains that "it was self-defence, I didn't realise that it was able to _move_."

Combeferre lays one of his appendages across his face in his species’ traditional expression of exasperation and wills Enjolras to _just stop thinking_.

**III**

Combeferre is four years and six months old and _so ready_ and not nearly ready at all when he starts kindergarten.  He has started early, he needs the intellectual stimulation, but he is painfully shy and socially awkward.  On his first day he cries, a little, when some of the other kids don’t want to play.  Courfeyrac marches up to him, warm but brooking no opposition, and declares that Combeferre is to come and sit with his friend Enjolras.  Courfeyrac then pulls Combeferre’s sleeve and walks him across the room, arranging him on the rug under the window, and the three of them crowd around a children’s atlas letting their world grow, just a little.

Combeferre is very excited to go to school one particular morning a few weeks later, carefully cradling a cactus in a little stone bowl, giving it to Enjolras and explaining that this species had come from Spain, just like in the atlas.  Courfeyrac pouts at not getting a gift until Combeferre leans over to place a very soft kiss on his cheek.

One day Enjolras says he doesn’t want to play with Combeferre anymore, which Combeferre accepts with a sorrowful “oh” and retreats to the other side of the room, leaving Courfeyrac moving back and forth between them all morning.  By lunchtime Courfeyrac is tired of everyone being sad, and so he makes Enjolras explain. 

Little Enjolras’ chin wobbles as he confesses that he had dropped the cactus.  “It was self-defence,” Enjolras said, sniffling. “The cactus bit me.”  Combeferre pulls Enjolras and Courfeyrac into a hug, before examining Enjolras’ finger and saying very seriously “you definitely have an ouchy”.

**IV**

In 1949 the entire world is still reeling from World War II, and the New York newspaper where Combeferre is employed as the science reporter is coming into its own.  Bursting at the seams in their inadequate office space, Combeferre was sharing with the columnist Enjolras - sharing an office and frequently a bed.   Courfeyrac, a freelancer who wrote the wedding and engagement announcements and lived exclusively on champagne and bridesmaids, passed by regularly to slot into what little space was left.

With little space and only the light of the perpetually flickering fluorescent bulbs overhead they were quickly amassing quite the graveyard of dearly departed office plants.

The day Combeferre returned to work after a week away visiting family most of the way across the country, he was tinted pink from the sun and carrying a paper bag.  From it he withdrew a box of donuts, a note from Grantaire (layout and graphics) which said _I bet you $5 Enjolras can determine the contents of this note simply by reading your mind_ under a scribbled cartoon, and a cactus in a gaudy macramé covered pot.

“A gift from New Mexico.  Surely a cactus can survive even this level of hell.”

Combeferre returned from a meeting with his editor two days later to find the cactus - pot, macramé cover and all - lying in pieces on his desk, next to a memo which said simply _it was self-defence, I didn’t like the way it was looking at me._

Combeferre sighed, carefully cleaned off his desk, and wound a new page into his typewriter so he could start his story on the US government sending German-built rockets into space.

Combeferre held up one hand when Enjolras returned, looking contrite and bearing an apology coffee.  “I don’t want to hear it,” he said, accepting the coffee anyway.

**V.**

Paris, 2014, Enjolras has been living with Combeferre in one place or another since they graduated university.  They are sodium and chlorine, corrosive and explosive unless they share the same space.  They're bonded, just as they are in most realities, but it's a trade, not a blending.  

Grantaire is still complaining about their silent conversations, Courfeyrac has his hand almost permanently lodged in Combeferre's back pocket.

They have been living together so long, their routine now a dance, they know each other better than anyone.  Combeferre buys the cactus after a particularly tense meeting, an unspoken reminder of the consequences of being too prickly.

Enjolras fights with the cactus constantly.  Actual, verbal arguments, Enjolras seething and the cactus sitting there, completely impassive, since - you know - entirely inanimate.  This somehow has a calming effect on Enjolras, and Combeferre can't even begin to understand it because he has lived his adult life being impassive in the face of Enjolras' fury and it's never been _nearly_ as effective.  Since it's a fucking cactus Combeferre is not going to allow himself to feel anything other than bemusement.

He certainly isn't going to feel _jealous_.  Of the magical abilities of a cactus.  No, that is a thing which is not happening.  Except that one time he showed up drunk at Courfeyrac's door whining about how much better at _Enjolras_ that fucking cactus was.

Combeferre comes home one evening to find the garbage disposal in pieces in the kitchen, Enjolras is sitting there drinking a giant mug of coffee and reading something on his phone as if there wasn't a mass of metal and blades and screws strewn all around him.

It takes Combeferre a moment to notice the _chunks of cactus_ in the debris.

Combeferre raises an eyebrow, and Enjolras simply says "it was self-defence, the cactus attacked me."

**\+ I**

Combeferre has accepted a post-doctoral position with a research team working on paediatric neuroblastoma.  It's prestigious, it's _important_ ; it's also 450 kilometres away, at a hospital in London.

Combeferre unlocks and opens the door to his flat for the first time, his home for the next 9-12 months, and sees a tiny cactus in a terracotta pot sitting right in the middle of the kitchen floor.  There is a note, which says simply

_Always,  
Enjolras_

**Author's Note:**

> ~~This will hopefully make sense as a stand alone, as long as you don't think too hard about the _why_.~~
> 
>  
> 
> Title from...a thing. I'm sure.
> 
> I'm [prometheusatthebarricade](http://prometheusatthebarricade.tumblr.com), and I have nothing in particular against cacti. I promise.
> 
> Come say hi :D


End file.
